Dispatch: Accent In My Pocket

Sometimes the world is so flat it feels like you could slip free of Earth's gravity and slide off. Early February on the road. Photo by me, 2026.

 

The tail end of January and the beginning of February was two weeks on the road, sometimes dirt roads, of the south. It was the winter thaw for the mind collecting new sights, sounds, scents, tastes and discarding the mental plaque of the previous year. I wore my accent when needed, gave nods of indifference to strange politics of strangers and found myself shooting the shit in the middle of the road with locals. I wandered for hours through another history museum, watched water flow and listened to the birds in the trees. There was lots of bad coffee in gas station travel cups too. Some of the experience might end up in a book or maybe in a blog post. I thought a lot about the death of an old best friend between the mile markers and the hash marks on the speedometer. I wanted one more stupid teenage argument with him for the fun of it. This is how life and death go as the inseparable pair that they are.

Columbus, Georgia. Photo by me, February 2026.

I came home to bulbs waking up from winter and sat behind my desk. It was time to get back into the rhythm of writing my next novel.  

Golly gee. Tell me about them lyrics son. You are one pontificating rascal, that's what you are.

Somewhere I was in a bookstore and noticed in the prominent displays by the door a stack of poetry books with the bedraggled face of the hammy actor Matthew McConaughey. He is the actor/renaissance man who straight guys of my generation have crushes on and secretly wish they were. As you can tell by the sepia toned cover photo Matthew is a man with deep thoughts with his half open shirt and is surely in the running for a Pulitzer. Poems & Prayers is exactly the book that the world does not need, but it is what it gets. Traditional publishing is on a mission to destroy and humiliate itself in the most shameless ways. I hope he publishes a cook book next. Maybe something called Corn & Coca-Cola.

I read this Atlantic piece on Rod Dreher. It was interesting as the writer attempted to portray Dreher as some noble romantic fighting to save the soul of Western culture from Budapest, but instead he seemed miserable in a fantasy world of his own making. I have only read a few pieces by him over the years, though I have known about him for a long time, and Dreher is a peculiar one. The slipping in of the line by the brilliant and highly regarded atheist Richard Dawkins about him being a “cultural christian”, which I am familiar with, is intellectually dishonest with the usage of “declared” as if it were some major proclamation from on high (it wasn't) and it is very troubling for the use of “ally” (it is laughable to suggest he is, since Dreher is anti-science) and there is zero context given. I remember Dawkins saying that remark either in a debate or interview and it was not a grand gesture as it was a reference to how he was raised during his childhood without a choice on the matter. I respect and agree with Dawkins more than I ever could with Dreher. The tone of the article seemed to be a weird attempt to launder the ideas of Dreher and position him for future shadowy political influence in the United States.

Most of Carlton, Georgia. All five of these storefronts are occupied by this one antique store. Photo by me, February 2026.

One day well east of Athens in Madison County near the Elbert County line we stopped in the tiny community of Carlton clinging to life next to the train tracks. It is the kind of place you have to pull off the main road and intentionally seek out or you would never have a reason to pass through. Few people do as evidenced by the population change from 1900 to 2020 that was a loss of fourteen people in one hundred and twenty years down to two hundred and sixty-three. I find it charming that communities like this have managed to survive safe from Atlanta's sprawl. I remember when places like this were the norm in North Georgia outside of metro Atlanta in the 1980s.

Photo by me, February 2026.

This is the kind of place you have to dig, maybe get a little dusty and you will be rewarded. Two buildings down to the left next to the post office is a local branch of the Hell's Angels. I suppose they will not bother you if you do not bother them.

Photo by me, February 2026.

You do not know the smile and warm feeling I had when this jukebox played Don't Make My Brown Eyes Blue by Crystal Gayle. I skipped by like the small child I was in 1977 when my mother would play this record on our living room stereo which was near the same size as this jukebox. 

Photo by me, February 2026.

A cat strolled through on its rounds as I flipped through a copy of the photo book Warhol and Friends.

Photo by me, February 2026.

It was digging paradise where prices are rough ideas. 

Athens, Ga. Photo by me, February 2026.

 

Athens, Ga. Photo by me, February 2026.

Another day I attended a festival in downtown Athens and tried to shake loose a ghost. That old best friend of mine who recently died lived there in the early 1990s while he attended UGA. He went off to New York afterward to work in historic preservation. Athens of the '90s was a different place from the Athens of today, kind of like most of the state. It was one of the hot music scenes at the time like Seattle.

This is REM performing live in their hometown at the 40 Watt (pictured above) in 1992.

 

And so it goes... 

Me. February 2026.

on the road with an accent in my pocket chasing those sunny days.

2025 Review: Preppies In The Snow

Naughty and nice are not mutually exclusive. Photo by me, Greensboro, Georgia.

More people I have known died in 2025. Is that too blunt or too obvious? It is not a mystery that the older I become, the more it happens and that is the logical and detached way to approach it. The longer life lasts the more it resembles a classic BMW in need of repairs beyond the routine maintenance, but the backfire of death is no less of a surprise each time it is heard. Preppies in the snow put their hands up to cover their ears and wait.

Too many people have died too young. Dear Generation X, what are you doing ?

I read the obituaries and tried to reconcile the adult to the kid I knew. I am often surprised to read the twists and turns of what people became. People do change, or maybe I never knew some of them that well past the superficial observations in a red brick school in a country town. A boy pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, twirled his number two pencil and did multiplication on his fingers. A teenage girl leaned back in a rocking chair and laughed too hard on the wrong beat as she tried to grasp the conversation of adults. What did we learn?

Funerals are the wrinkles on the face of a life. Gray hairs in the mirror are the honest rebels stealing from the self-image that mistakenly thinks you could still pass for thirty. Forty? Not even. Whatever the kids are listening to and whatever slang they are inventing is whatever the kids are listening to and saying. Translators are not made for that duty. You still think 2006 was a week ago as you tune into 99X or River 97 and drum your fingers on the steering wheel to Everytime You Go Away by Paul Young. You squint at the red light that is poorly timed and notice that the restaurant that was there on the corner your entire life is now a vape shop and tattoo parlor serving burritos without a permit and when did they build that Dollar General? Only yesterday your child was six and you were late for soccer practice.

The end of a year always makes us consider time and where it went. The mind has difficulty with time's salamander slick and slippery nature.

 

Andrew McCarthy in 1987's Mannequin.

Damn the changes, damn the politics, damn the numbing disease of cheap nostalgia and damn it all to hell, but I am thankful that my waist size is still a thirty. Now the light is green, the radio plays Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us and you want to believe it. You are convinced. Traffic flows like it did before millions moved here to ruin paradise and Andrew McCarthy sure was pretty in Mannequin. You strain your voice singing, “We can build this dream together.” You swear you did not once tell that minor piece of trivia in a Thomas Drive bar in Panama City that the lead singer, Mickey Thomas, was from Cairo, Georgia. That is Cairo pronounced like the syrup and not the city in Egypt.

My 2025 was like sitting down to eat at a favorite restaurant, eating my favorite foods and leaving full but not satisfied. I do not know what it was about this year, but it lacked novelty. There were new sights, sounds, places and aches in the joints. I was not bored; that seems to be a condition I never experience, but perhaps I became immune to the news, the messed-up weather, confused flowers and the next batch of woods toppled for luxury apartments over a Panda Express. Gas was cheaper and I spent an hour looking for the ear hair trimmer. The year was over before I knew it.

At fifty-two, I noticed my age like a phone notification that I could not swipe away. I felt a little slower, less nimble and it took me longer to recharge. It now took me two cups of coffee and a handful of Costco supplements before my brain began to percolate in my skull. Silence for the first hour of a day was a requirement or I became the grumpy old man who I never wanted to imitate.

Home Away From Home in Fort Lauderdale. Photo by me.

The secret “home away from home” in Fort Lauderdale was sold this year. It was a unique and special place for sixteen years. I will miss talking to the lizards on the patio, curious stray cats and morning coffee walks to Sebastian Street Beach. I doubt we will find another place like it.

Novel 4 (it really does have a title) came along nicely from January to December. It is something new, something current and has nothing to do with me. There are always so many miles in my year, on foot and by car and do not think that has not been an influence on me. Novel 4 is the first book I did not begin writing in Fort Lauderdale. I had a notebook of ripe ideas and then sentences formed in my head on a cold day on the square in Gainesville in January with a stomach full of barbecue. The characters Adam, Hastings and Evan were born without the need for painkillers.

Weirdest moment:

Standing on the shady side of a street in Warner Robins outside a restaurant. That middle Georgia heat and humidity had stolen the birdsong and my patience. A car creeped up to me and with the sun reflected on the windows and I could not see inside. A scratchy voice called, “Hey white boy.” I looked without looking and gripped my phone a little tighter. The voice called out again, “Hey white boy,” and again I ignored it. My eyes moved behind my sunglasses and I widened my stance. I was not a boy except for maybe in the way some southerners mean it. Three more times the voice called with the same words. Trouble and I was no fool. The car went into reverse and backed away with the possible intention of hiding the tag.

Favorite moment:

Watching the fog in Normaltown in February. Yes, it is more than just a lyric in the B52's Deadbeat Club. 2025 was still goo, shapeless, untethered and iridescent. I could have been in any moment in my life when winter was spooling off into a gray pile of yarn. Maybe I was drifting in the early 90s with a hole in the sleeve of my sweater and wearing a barn jacket and boots. There was a whiff of Polo from the green bottle in the air. A water tower was the appearing and disappearing UFO down the street. I was happy.

Worst moment:
Sitting in a Johns Creek Hospital room and waiting with my grip on the arms of a plastic chair. Helplessness bred in hospitals is the worst.

Best Festival:

Flannery O'Connor's grave. Photo by me, October 2025. 

I went to too many. It was a tie between Athfest and that one down in Milledgeville where I hunted down the grave of Flannery O'Connor. Death was on my mind at every turn this year or so it seemed.

My favorite movie:

Eddington. It satirized the times better than any other movie that tried. It was smart and the only movie that made me laugh out loud.

My favorite new to me music:

The White Birch album by Codeine. It may have come out in 1994, but I had not listened to it until this year. I found it by way of Slint and Shipping News.

 

Cheap nostalgia at $20. My actual Bon Jovi ticket from 1989.

There is no singular defining moment to a year, the same as there is no precise moment that defines a life. To follow a path in the woods, return a smile, accept an invitation, or jump from a window and roll to the ground, life equalizes the regrets and the joys. News readers, nervous funeral orators, biographers, politicians, historians, TikTok influencers and novelists will lie to you. Maybe, if I am going to lie, then it was the Bon Jovi concert at Lakewood in 1989 when I held a flickering lighter in the air like a torch held in my sixteen-year-old hand to I'll Be There For You, but I am drowsy from the decades of remembering those tight jeans and how he was not. A previous lesson learned and only reinforced. All of life goes into the dryer the same as all of it went into the washer. Moments are agitated, churned and rinsed in the same spins until it is a soup of consciousness. They lived, they died and some of it was good, better than it should have been and what more can anyone want besides more time?

What do you do with a used-up and expired year? Nothing really. You go to bed, wake up and open the next year. The Christmas tree comes down slower than it went up and goes back into the attic. The mind and the hand learn to write a different number. In a year, the preppies in the snow will come inside and gather around the fireplace again cradling whatever is the trendy drink.

 

Monticello, Georgia. Photo by me, September 2025.

2025 is the sunset on the hood of a car speeding faster than it used to; you cannot have it again. 2026 is a missed call from an unknown number.

Jump scare. Yours truly. I keep Rabbit Tobacco Field dim to avoid scaring myself. Mood lighting is your friend. December 2025.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays and have the best 2026 that you can.

And finally it is Preppies In The Snow. Ralph Lauren and Vidal Sassoon would be proud. Last Christmas by WHAM!

---

Addendum 

All dressed in black, he won't be coming back
Save your tears, you've got years and years
The pains of seventeen's
Unreal they're only dreams...

As I was putting this post to bed and proofreading I learned Chris Rea had died. He was not a household name, but there are not many of them in the days of niche entertainment and the absence of a shared cultural reality. If you are a Gen X kid/fortunate 70s child you would have heard Fool If You Think It's Over in the summer of 1978 on Top 40 Radio. I first heard it on Atlanta's Z-93 in my mother's Camaro and sliding around on the cold leather backseat of my father's Cadillac through the eighties on B98.5. We had a copy of it in our music collection. I filed the song away as a meaningful one of my childhood. I loved the song then and still do.

When I was writing Dweller On The Boundary it was one of the primary songs I used to manipulate myself into the emotional headspace needed to go there. My books always have a soundtrack. I listened to it on repeat along with Never Gonna Let You Go by Sergio Mendes (for the worst memories), Bread's If, Boz Scaggs' We're All Alone (probably one of the songs for my funeral - just sayin'), The Greatest Love of All by George Benson (the best version and it will make you cry), Sailing by Christopher Cross, King of Pain and Wrapped Around Your Finger from The Police, Steal Away by Robbie Dupree, Supertramp's The Logical Song, Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind and others before writing and during breaks. I abused the hell out of myself to write that book.

Thank you for the music and memories. Chris Rea was 74.

From Green To Brown

 

Summer's death duly noted in Athens, Ga. Photo by me, August 2025.

Summer died on the backs of my knees in a cool, dry breeze this past Sunday in Athens. It was a recognition the same as the flocks of birds beginning the migration south as they speckled the sky of smeared clouds. It was a relief as if I had accomplished something more than play witness to the passing of another season. I was running errands and the surname of the protagonist of my current novel had come to me. I had been stressing over this not-so-minor detail for months. The last name had to sound right or sing when spoken aloud with the first name and I had paired numerous names in my head without success. Then in a parking lot among the first tinges of fall color in the sugar maples it came. The name was simple, solid and was a fine tonic to the more complex first name. The character was fully born.

 

Fiona Apple's album When the Pawn...

I have been listening to lots of Fiona Apple the past couple of weeks and this happens to me most every fall. I am the eternal fan. Her music reminds me of Louisville in the 1990s and a particular autumn when I thought everything in life was as perfect as life could get. I was in my twenties and foolish; what else can I say? Life is never perfect except in small increments and the good news is that it happens even long after the twenties are nostalgic memories. Perfect in a parking lot in the breeze in Athens, Georgia kind of way or perfect in the sense of appreciating happiness in victories over creative blocks.

With perfection comes the imperfection and Saturday we attended an arts festival on the square over in faraway Marietta. I can do without ever attending another arts festival for the rest of my life. I am so tired of seeing booths of the same makeshift art projects made in garages and basements with glue guns, glitter and limited inspiration.

 

The book cover of Pieces of the Frame by John McPhee.

Labor Day was about getting in the miles on the legs through the woods, reflections on a lake and feeling fresh in the crisp air. Fall is a rejuvenator not sold in a bottle at the cosmetics counter or in the energy drink aisle at the grocery store. Deer foraged in the shadows and my mind thumbed thoughts on the book I have been reading, Pieces of the Frame (1975) by John McPhee. There was a story in the essay, Travels in Georgia, about McPhee, Sam Candler (an heir to the Coca-Cola fortune) and Carol Ruckdeschel (a conservationist) canoeing down the Chattahoochee River with then-Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter with Georgia State Patrol troopers as bodyguards. Carter, a country boy, a former Navy officer and an avid outdoorsman, fit perfectly into the canoe trip, which was meant to serve as a way to convince him to protect the land along the Chattahoochee, which he did as President of the United States. After the trip, the group ate grilled cheese sandwiches at a twenty-foot table under a crystal chandelier and then played basketball in the driveway of the governor's mansion on West Paces in Buckhead, a thirty-room Greek Revival home I toured as a kid in the 1980s, either during the George Busbee or the first Joe Frank Harris administration. I thought, “Well that kind of politician no longer exists,” but politicians sure like to play up and pander to the average common person when trying to get elected. Carter, disparaged by people who have never done a decent day's work in their life, unlike the phonies, was genuine. Since 1980, if you are as old as I am, you have to wonder what people value and expect from their presidents.

 

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Monday wound down as I re-watched Sunday Bloody Sunday from 1971 starring Glenda Jackson, Peter Finch and Murray Head. The movie, nominated for four Academy Awards, is about a love triangle between a straight woman, a gay male Jewish doctor and a bisexual artist. It was the right cozy movie to start fall with the drab London weather and scenery and what I like most about that movie is the abundance of brown fashion. 

All the world is beautifully exquisite seventies brown.

Every character lives in shades of the color brown from scarves, jackets, pants, coats, vests, sweaters, ties, turtlenecks and so on. The costume design was by the late Jocelyn Rickards who also designed for Blow-Up, From Russia With Love and many other films. She was a painter too and published her autobiography in 1987. It is very 1970s, as I remember that decade. Brown is a color not worn enough anymore. It is a sophisticated color that works well in any season and people should wear it. It is also the better choice between it and another popular seventies color, ghastly orange which is best suited for pumpkins. Perhaps the reason people do not is because it is a modest choice and does not garner enough attention in our narcissistic decadent times.

Other than Fiona Apple it seemed to be an all-out seventies entertainment weekend as the season turns from green to brown.

Summer Fever

The hottest day of the year cooking in Statham, Georgia. Photo by me, July 2025.

It reached 102 degrees in Athens on Monday, 100 on Tuesday and also 100 in Atlanta and I am elated July is over. The heat and humidity make July my least favorite month, I do not even like the name. The good news is that only one third of meteorological summer remains and perhaps this week was the peak of the heat. I am hopeful that there will not been another stretch with temperatures around 100 in August.

 

I was in Athens, Statham and Bogart on Monday during the worst of the heat. Many areas had been without significant rain since late June and driving the old Atlanta Highway the yards were brown. It was dry enough that even the crabgrass had given up. Horses and cows munched on brown grass in huddles underneath trees. The kudzu wilted and any type of breeze was nothing more than a dream. No humans wanted to be outside either, conversations with strangers were about the heat and the shade was a precious commodity. 

 

Statham, Ga. Photo by me, July 2025.

 

Statham, Ga. Photo by me, July 2025.

I spent some of the afternoon rummaging through the top floor of an old brick building without air conditioning in Statham. The heat index was around 110 degrees. It was not the best day to be doing such, but I cannot resist wandering through old buildings when the opportunity presents.

 

The sky turned black by late afternoon in Athens upon leaving Trader Joe's.  Relief filled the horizon as I saw the storms with red and magenta on the radar depiction on my phone. To the east over downtown Athens the rain poured. When it is that hot, the atmosphere boils up storms that unleash the torrents. Such is the summer fever and hopefully it has broken.

 

Photo by me, July 2025.

Driving out of town, a puny storm wet the roads to make steam rise from the asphalt. Dog days be gone and good riddance to July.
 

The Mid Point of 2025

Happy Fourth of July from Broad Street in Monroe, Georgia. Photo by me, June 2025.

It was during a hiking trip last fall and sitting in a barbecue joint in Gainesville, Georgia when I knew I had enough notes and ideas to begin writing the first draft of a new novel. This realization was a nice change from when I had stood in Micanopy, Florida in September chasing down the ghost of River Phoenix. I was undecided if I was on a wild goose chase or if I was seeking twisted inspiration. Inspiration can come from anywhere I suppose, even from long dead movie stars with bad drug habits. 

The town square of Gainesville, Georgia. October 2024.

After eating, I walked around the square and aired out my thoughts like sheets on a clothes line. I had two people in mind who I had known that I could use as inspiration for characters. One was a prim and proper person and the other was a person who lived below their raising and had wasted their chance at life. These two would be among the foundational characters at the heart of the novel. I decided to set this story primarily in two places I know well, Monroe, Georgia and Athens. River Phoenix and Micanopy, Florida might still figure into this somehow or maybe not, River did spend time in Athens hanging out with Michael Stipe in the 1990s. 

"The bike is the answer." Athens, Georgia. Photo by me, April 2014.

At the mid point of this year, this book is a long way from being finished and I am still writing the first draft. There will be no new book from me in 2025. Other than what I have written above, the only new tease I have for this book might be found in the Eagles song One of These Nights crossed with the mood and themes of the Chris Isaak song Wicked Game. A previous tease can be found in a post here.

 

A week ago, Shadow's Gravity had its one year anniversary and I updated the cover.  

The new cover features a portion of a photo of my mother from the late 1940s when she was a toddler. She was holding on to the back of a parked Mercury and had dropped her toy cat. 

Athfest 2025

 

Athens, Georgia. Photo by me, June 2025.

We dropped into Athfest for another year this past weekend. It was Sunday afternoon at the arts and music festival that many townies see as the highlight of townie summer in Athens after the UGA students leave. We parked on the north end of campus and walked over to the scene. I am not keen on arts festivals; I have been to too many and seen the homemade crafts made with glue guns and chainsaws enough times, but I like Athfest as it has more live music than art. Though you can find plenty of crafts with tongue-wagging bulldogs stuck on them if you are inclined.

A rainbow crosswalk at College Avenue and E. Clayton Street out front of Wuxtry Records. Photo by me, June 2025.

A sparse bunch at the main stage outside the 40 Watt Club. Photo by me, June 2025.

The weather was hot and perhaps that was the reason the crowd was thin at the main stage outside the 40 Watt when we showed.

A band performs on another stage on N. Hull. Photo by me, June 2025.

The crowds. Photo by me, 2025.

Over on N. Hull Street by The World Famous, we found the crowd by another stage. Maybe they sought the shade? The mood of the people was that of not wanting to let it wind down, to keep the party going until it was a last call, beer-goggle-eyed evening that ended in a long walk of shame to Normaltown or Five Points. We did not stick around long enough to witness that.

I had heard that James Franco was in town working on a project with William H. Macy and that he had been seen in the downtown restaurants. If he was going to be in Athens on Sunday, then he might as well have been at Athfest incognito. Franco does have an Athens connection, as he directed videos for R.EM.'s That Someone Is You and Blue from the album Collapse Into Now.

The arts? Photo by me, June 2025.

So many movies and television shows are filmed in Georgia that you regularly run into them. A television show for ABC was filming recently in a park that I often walk in for exercise and I recently passed another show featuring Sylvester Stallone that was shooting in Monroe. At my last place in Atlanta, before I moved, some scenes from Hillbilly Elegy were filmed within walking distance around the corner and Stranger Things was partly shot nearby too. I am not impressed by the lights or stars, as I find the productions are often a hindrance to public spaces and roads closed to the public.

Walking through Athfest I passed a man on W. Washington Street who looked exactly like Franco and we made eye contact. He was with two other rather attractive guys who were more fashionably dressed than most. They gave off the air of not being townies even though Athens has plenty of local wannabe hipsters. I was inches from the guy for a few seconds and in that brief moment I thought it was Franco.

Later, I spotted the trio again playing hacky sack on a closed street. I wanted to snag a photo, but the guy was looking my direction as I walked by. I wanted to be more subtle about it and the opportunity passed. Was it James Franco? Maybe or maybe not.

I am pretty terrible about recognizing famous people in person. I have been a huge fan of R.E.M since the 1980s and I could walk by Michael Stipe on E. Broad Street and never realize it. Well, I did see Stipe once in Atlanta in the 1990s, but that was work related. Franco is only five years younger than I am and the more I consider it, the guy I saw looked like he was in his twenties rather than his forties, but some people do age incredibly well.

I look forward to another Athfest next year to see whom I do not meet on the street.

Looking The Other Way

The 1985 book America by Andy Warhol.

 

Wednesday, November 5, 1980— Düsseldorf—Baden Baden—Stuttgart

I woke up at 3:00 in the morning and I heard the sad news of Carter losing so desperately to Reagan. It was the first time a president conceded so early. He had tears in his eyes.

I couldn’t sleep and I took a Valium. - Andy Warhol from The Andy Warhol Diaries

Artwork by the late Keith Haring.

I was writing a lengthy essay about the election, the sanctimonious behavior of the Democratic Party over the last several years and what it all meant for the good ol' U.S.A., but political obsession is a pointless luxury. I do not much enjoy writing about politics and whining about it is not something I indulge, as I have already shared my opinion on political whiners of all stripes. The 90s version of me in my youth was interested in sitting in cozy rooms discussing politics over coffee, board games and Nirvana with friends. The fifty-something version of me typing onto a screen, still drinking coffee by the gallon, listening to post-punk music and sitting in my house is much less interested in modern political dialogue that intrudes on and divides EVERYTHING. Politics went from a hobby in the 90s to a way of life for far too many people in the world.

Besides, neither party appeals to me. I am not a third-party person; I am an independent. Oligarchs and religious types prop up the Republicans and the Democratic Party is the NPR of political parties that relishes shitting on its audience and wonders why fewer are listening. I stopped listening to NPR years ago and for good reason - I have too much self-respect to be made to feel like I am supposed to be guilty for all of humanity's crimes. Fuck that noise.

Four days after the election, I scrolled past the scorched earth Democratic meltdowns and conspiracy theories on Facebook from the reactionaries and rolled my eyes. My first thought was, where were they in the eighties and nineties when people like me were ostracized for being gay, denied basic human decency, lost jobs, were attacked, were dying of AIDS or could not find a place to live? Up until now, some people have been spoiled and never faced loss or hardship until their middle age and somehow they looked the other way until it personally affected them. I take no satisfaction in their plight, but pardon me for looking the other way and having little sympathy.

Even in the Democratic stronghold of Athens, Georgia Trump signs were evident. Trump received 30 percent of the vote there in 2024, up from 28 percent in 2020 and 2016. Photo by me, November 2024.

The outcome of the election was obvious if you were paying attention and did not believe the polls or the media or the online pundits who all claimed it was going to be close. The predictions of a close race were good for subscriptions to Substacks, newspapers, Youtube channels and for television ratings. Through various sources, people injected the drama straight into their necks and believed anyone regardless of their lack of credibility as long as they told them what they wanted to hear. Reality turned out to be an anticlimactic Electoral College blowout, a downright stomping for Democrats. The majority of the 2024 voters were fed up with the illegal immigration problems and abuses, held the perception that the economy was bad and made it sparkling clear that a change was needed.

August 2024 in Athens, Georgia. Photo by me.

The result was no surprise for those who get out of our bubbles and traverse the back roads. I felt it coming like my southern accent coming on when I am tired. I grew up in rural Georgia in the 1970s and 80s and have lived most of my life in this state. Though most of my adult life has existed inside the city of Atlanta, I still know it from end to end like a long-ago lover in a Paulding County tunnel. In the months leading up to the election from one end of the state to the other down the two-lane and sometimes one-lane back roads of the countryside and even on suburban Atlanta streets, I saw more Trump yard signs, flags and campaign materials strewn in yards than I did for Harris. Forget any notion that Trump voters are shy. I have found that public displays of support are a better barometer of voter enthusiasm than some dude making Youtube videos in his spare bedroom in his underwear or paid celebrity endorsements.

 

Left to right: Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Generra Clothing, Max Headroom and 80s MTV.

Hillary Clinton's loss was a stunner, which can still be felt today, but Harris losing was not. However, this is not 2016. Shall I consult the Swatch around my left wrist? 

 

My bangs cover my eyes. I am wearing Bugle Boy pants and a Generra sweater. The dystopian cyberpunk television show Max Headroom has been canceled and George Michael, Terrence Trent D'Arby and INXS cassettes are burning up my Sony boombox. It is dark. It is late 1980s dark. Warhol died last year, Basquiat will die of a heroin overdose this year, Robert Mapplethorpe will die next year and Keith Haring will be dead in two years. AIDS is the cold, misty fog that glistens on the surfaces of my thoughts. Always there, always dampening the mood and ready to snatch me. The country has had two terms of Reagan and now it is time for a sequel with George H. Bush. The country elected its nostalgia candidate.

 

It is 1988.

 

What is the explanation for this? I suspect there are several reasons, but one of the primary drivers is the cultural changes in the country and not economic anxiety. Generation X has reached a point in life where they believe the past was better than the present. It seems to happen with every generation that nostalgia for youth and rose-colored glasses are handed out with AARP cards. 

 

Baby Boomers before us were served up their nostalgia beginning in the 80s with movies like Dirty Dancing and The Big Chill. Nostalgia is a big seller for advertisers. Now the music from our youth in the 70s, 80s and 90s is the soundtrack to commercials and movies. The present version of an "oldies" radio station is alternative music, including the 90s grunge era. When I was a kid, an oldies station, like say Fox 97 in Atlanta at the time, played music from the 1950s and 60s. 99X in Atlanta, which played new rock in the 90s and plays "classic alternative" today, is the modern version of an oldies station.

Corey Haim in that terrible movie Dream A Little Dream and Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club.

The eighties were not a bad time to be a kid, roaming wild with lax parental supervision, watching Saturday morning cartoons, playing Atari, hanging out in malls, zoning out to MTV, school shootings did not exist, a gallon of gas was less than a dollar where I grew up and there was the comfort in knowing that mommy and daddy were going to tuck us into fresh sheets every night. Generation X felt safe, comfortable and free to be kids without social media and cell phones logging our every moment and robbing reality from us. We were the last of a kind that had a childhood where technology had its place but did not consume our every moment. Sure, every so often and for a second I would not mind being fourteen again, nurturing my severe crush on Corey Haim or admiring Molly Ringwald in everything, but I do not want to take the country back to that time.

 

The eyes of middle-class children did not much see or experience the bad aspects of the 80s under Reagan. Many among my generation, Generation X, believe without a doubt that Reagan was a great man, a god to worship. I intensely disagree for a plethora of reasons. They believe that because they lived through the eighties with the perspective of children when mommy and daddy took care of everything. As kids in the 80s, Generation X did not have a care in the world and of course life was easier. It warped some into having a false sense of security about what the eighties were like. They imagine Reagan wrapped in the red, white and blue as a surrogate father and they view Trump as a throwback to that era. Trump captured that powerful drug of nostalgia in them and gave them an overdose. What was the 1980 campaign slogan for Reagan? It was the extremely familiar phrase, "Make America great again." 

 

It is a disputed quote, but it is often attributed to Mark Twain that he said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." None of what is happening now is original. The major difference is that my generation is not kids in 2024 and should know better. The consequences are going to be worse than coming home late after curfew. Yet, here we are and where we have been has not been the best either, if we are intellectually honest. Generation X got their nostalgia fix in this election, but governing a country is not the same as organizing a twenty-five-year high school reunion. Who the hell wants to attend one of those anyway or watch Reality Bites ever again?

The gas station scene from Reality Bites in 1994.

Though the gas station scene in Reality Bites is funny. That scene captures so much of the essence of the stupid fun we had without feeling like the world was watching our every move for some accusation of cultural appropriation or a microaggression in which to cancel people. We had the basic freedom of fun. We were an unserious bunch and that was one of our better traits. Political correctness was on the rise in the 90s but it was mostly something argued over on talk shows and in magazines. It was not something that existed in daily life unless it was being mocked. In the strangest twist since, both leftists and conservatives want to police and control speech and ban books. It has become an upside down world where people walk on eggshells and there is such a job in publishing known as a sensitivity reader.

You're right from your side
I'm right from mine
We're both just one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind. - Bob Dylan 1964

Conservative Senator Jesse Helms left and gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe on the right. In 1989 Helms used Mapplethorpe to attack NEA funding of artists.

In this deeply divisive era, which has been growing for over the last two decades and coincides with the rise of mass cell phone usage and social media, there are cynical calls for unity, which no one believes as it would require one side to admit it was wrong. Partisans from both sides claim the moral high ground or to be on the right side of history and they can cheer or cry, but it makes no difference to me. I could never trust a Republican having grown up in the times of Reagan, Bush, Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich. I cannot trust the Democrats either with illiberal ideologues who think a country should not have borders, enforce fundamental laws and want to divide and conquer based on demographics. I have no allegiance to either party. It is country over party for me and not the other way around.

 

This is a watershed moment in the United States that will transform the cultural and legal landscape for years if not decades to come. Hope is all I have that it will not be as bad as I expect and that maybe there will be a few unintended good consequences from it. It is unfair to blame Generation X for all of this election, as most every age group and demographic showed gains for Trump. Enough voters across the spectrum chose him and everything he represents and entails over Harris. This essay for me was my analysis of what I believe is going on with my generation. On second thought, maybe I did write a lengthy political essay. Now I can be a good consumer and buy a tee shirt or hoodie adorned with the art of Haring, Basquiat and Warhol.

Somewhere out there in January 1989 I am fifteen years old. I am walking down the sidewalk in Midtown Atlanta on my way to the Fox Theater to see Duran Duran's Big Thing tour with a friend. It will be my first concert. It will be a special moment in the darkness, like a searchlight through the fog. Thirty-five years later, I will have kept going and will again look for that light. It is what can be done. Or, as Warhol would have done, one could pop a Valium and go back to sleep.

David Wojnarowicz . Gay artist and activist. Died in 1992 of AIDS.